Alternative fuel sources and horsepower

[J8127]

I have a question, every one is harping about cars that don't run on gasoline, well...can these cars be street eating, fire breather, tire shreading machines? Or is the Prius the sports car of the future?

[SloNLo_350]

On Trucks they had a thing about Biodiesel and they were saying it actually makes more power than petroleum based diesel. And Race cars run on methanol and ethanol. Ethanol is made from corn, so of course they can be fast, just expensive. That and methanol burns at 5:1 so it doesn't get you nearly as far.

[J8127]

I know about methonal, but like will we ever see a hybrid Z06? Is the next Camaro gonna run on E85? I meen the viable alternative sources at the moment, or any that may be being thought up, can they make the power to still have fun?

[SloNLo_350]

They have flexible fuel trucks right now. Just a matter of putting methanol in it and whatever else it requires to use it. I'm sure soon that will be an option for all the models.

[88leadsled]

I would say that hybrid sports cars will come eventually, I think Honda may have already had some concepts. They could potentially be rather fast, you could launch pretty hard since the electric motor makes the most torque at 0 RPM.

Then you combine the hybrid with something like displacement on demand and who knows what kind of mileage you could get and still have impressive performance.

The problem with biodiesel is that it takes 1 gallon or petroleum diesel to make one gallon of biodiesel, not really gaining anything other than people that wear Birkenstocks and Willie Nelson(he's a big propent of it because it is good for the American farmer) can feel good about it. Maybe when its ramped up to more of a mass production sort of thing it will work out to be positive, because a few years ago it took several gallons of petroleum diesel to make one of biodiesel.

I could go on all day concerning alt. fuels, hybrids and the future of the internal combustion engine, but I doubt most of you have read this far so I'll spare my keyboard the wear.

[luv_my_z28]

Take a look at the new Accord hybrid, its got more power, and as a result is faster than the regular accord. I say give it about 5 years and we are going to see some pretty amazing things from hybrid/electric cars.